10 Days at the Pond

Tabbi had swimming lessons for two weeks.  That meant two weeks of going to town every day.  10 miles each way.  I sign her up every year and then dread the "going to town every single day".  But this year, we decided that since we were going to town anyway, we could do some nature study that we otherwise wouldn't be able to do.  The Outdoor Hour Challenge for this month was on fish, so we went to the mill pond in town after swimming lessons every day.  We found lots of fun and interesting things to look at and study. Even though we never actually saw any fish!

 Snails!  We took two snails home and watched them come out of their shells and stick to the inside of a glass jar.  We took them back the next day.

Crawfish.  This one is small compared to some of the claws Tabbi found on the shore.  Something must like to eat them and leave the claws behind.

Plants.  These are some of the plants we found in and around the water.

Arrowhead

 Lily Pads

 Milkweed

Forget-me-nots

Cattails
We saw many insects along the way, including damselflies, ebony jewelwings, deerflies, water boatmen, and lots of dragonflies .

One day we did some dragonfly pastels, and another we sketched ducks.

The second week we even took our bikes along and made use of the bike path that goes all the way around the pond and along part of the creek. We also made a raft out of sticks that we set sail on the pond.

 We checked on the raft every day, but it pretty much sailed across the pond and got stuck in some lily pads.  This picture shows the raft where it stuck, and my van on the other side.

On the last day we took my granddaughter, Becca with us.

 Crossing one of the five bridges, and examining the raft, still stuck on the lily pads.

 We had so much fun learning about life at the pond.  We even made a booklet that we named "10 Days at the Pond" with lots of pictures, information and a daily log.  Maybe next time we'll see some fish!

OH!  And Tabbi even got her picture in the newspaper!

Wild Flowers

 This month we have been studying Wild Flowers. (Check out the "Handbook of Nature Study" blog!)  First of all we have several spring flowers that are small and white, so we took pictures of the blossoms, and of the leaves, so we could learn to tell the difference.  Some of the ones we found were:


Spring Beauty

Wood Anemone

Hepatica

And Strawberry

We also found Yarrow,

Jack-in-the-pulpet

And Speedwell.

This Dame's Rocket we found while we were at campmeeting.

And of course the common Dandelion.  We love Dandelion.  They are a great source of nutrition.  Our favorite spring time dish is Dandelion loaf!

This flower looks similar to the Dandelion.  But it is called Yellow Goat's Beard.  It even makes the white puff ball like the Dandelion, but much larger.  We see lots of them by the side of the road here in Wisconsin.

This one is another small flower called Bluets.

And we found a whole field full of these orange and yellow Hawkweed.

Wildflowers are something that we have always had lots of interest in, so we know a lot of the flowers of our area already. We just had lots of fun looking for flowers and trying to be the first to identify them.

Bugs

A couple of insects Tabbi found at our house in the last couple days...

 A Giant Ichneumon (female)

And a Stonefly

Tadpoles

We have tadpoles in the puddles out in the woods.  We took a walk yesterday and collected several of them so we can watch the transformation.  Some of them already have legs and a couple of them are almost ready to leave the water.

 If you look carefully you can see some of them swimming in the murky water.  The water was just teeming with them, but whenever I tried to get close enough for a picture, they would all swim away.

 Nathanael filled the jar with water for Tabbi and she caught them in a fish net.

 The Black Monster (aka Licorice) follows us whenever we go for a walk.

 A puddle filled with green, but no tadpoles in this one.

 And of course Kermit always comes along.  He likes to cool off in the creek.

 Tabbi found several small snails in the creek and brought back of few of them, too.

I found a couple of frog life cycle worksheets that Tabbi wanted to do.  She ended up combining them into one sheet.

I will be posting this blog entry on the "Handbook of Nature Study" blog carnival.  Check it out.  She has some awesome ideas!